This blog contains photos, descriptions and comments about our telescopes. Please take a minute to make comments. Make suggestions and feel free to email me at densteele@dobstuff.com any time
-- Dennis K6KRV

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Dear Dennis,Yesterday I arrived back in Australia with the ETT. Your advise was spot on. The telescope did not have any damage. Well, there was a small crack in the plastic mirror cover that came with the Optics. (see attached). Now I am looking forward to many nights under the Southern Cross with this telescope.

In order to get the ETT on the airplane, I broke the telescope down to its nuts and bolts. And everything but the optics was packed in regular checked luggage. I purchased a Nanuk hard case with heavy foam inside. I cut out a place to place the main mirror and mirror cell (still attached). The mirror has a few finger prints, but otherwise there is no harm to the mirror. As you can see from the note left by the TSA agent, they were interested and also encouraging.

Last night (when I was up due to jetlag), I went into the back yard and saw lots of naked eye and binocular dazzlers. (see the Telesope Facebook page for information on the sights from last night). I am now ready to reassemble the ETT and start using it, but I may force myself to wait while I do a bit of maintenance on the telescope. There are a few scratches in the finish, and I may make a few other changes, but nothing major.

When I return from Australia (some years down the track), I will have the airfreight guys pack the telescope and ship it back to the States.

This is my learner telescope (yes a 12” ETT). When I return, I will move up to a 16” or 18” dob. But most of the time my trusty 12” ETT will be my telescope for the road. I like it very much.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

I finally got around to building a telescope for myself. Here's a 13.1" f4.5with Swayze (Coulter refigured), curved-vane spider, Moonlite focuserand Sky Commander DSC. Note the red-dot finder on the top.

I like to mount the Sky commander on a "stage". It's a convenient wayto place the DSC where I want and easy to use.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Dennis, The pictures below show how I have used ABS plastic to create a shroud for the travel scope. In the first picture I have added a second piece of plastic that is made into a tube using Velcro. The second piece of plastic is around the lower piece, and the upper piece slides up and down in order to allow me to access the mirror cover. Then in the lower picture, I added a third piece of ABS plastic that is wrapped around the second piece. This allows the plastic to come up to a point just below the focuser. I anticipate more work with the plastic in order to block out even more light. For instance I may add flocking inside the plastic tube in order to increase contrast. Then I will probably use weather stripping at the bottom of the tube to block out light from the bottom. . Terry

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Dennis:Here is a pic of me and my 8” Astro-Tech Newtonian mounted on the new Dobstuff mount. I am still in the process of putting encoders on the altitude and azimuth. In this picture you can see how I mounted a Sky Commander on the dob stand.Best Regards,Bob